Any attempt to pin down
this exact moment, that exact image
exactly what I feel and need to say
needs words that are not born yet,
metaphors for minds not yet formed,
such is exactitude.
Yet that is what poets attempt to do.
We stand at the edge of the crowd,
listening to the music
hearing the echoes of other times and places,
and ask a shadow to dance.
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
For this weeks Earthweal Challenge on the nature of poetry
I send you my poetry
as the Sperm Whale sends her song
Out into the wide ocean
to listen for echoes, to hope for response
Her staccato clicks can be hunting for sustenance
but they also encode messages and love songs
I write as she sings, with the flow
poems gather, are born, cleaned and sung
Poems may sustain you or tell you a truth
Copyright © 2020 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Posted in response to a challenge by Rebecca Cunningham at fakeflamenco.com
https://fakeflamenco.com/2020/07/07/july-poetry-challenge-reto-poetico-de-julio/
My poem “Calling Sky” has been published and is available in the April issue of Utopia Science Fiction online – https://www.utopiasciencefiction.com/shop.
Thank you to the editor Tristan Evarts for publishing this poem which is very special to me…..
Drifting away down
under a dread
uncertain future
drowning
you are the light
at the top
of the water
Copyright © 2020 Kim Whysall-Hammond
For all those helping us through lockdown
Last spring the laurel hedge by my window was empty
No chirruping, calling, no rustling of glossy leaves
No fledglings edging off the nest onto twigs and then the adjacent fence
No wobbling and frantic flapping as parents patiently cajole
No triumphant flights to the Rose bushes
Only to tumble to the grass
As the chosen twig was too thin
I didn’t see a blackbird in my garden all summer
An oven of a season, hot, glaring, unseasonal in England
I mourn the fathers melodies, sung full voiced to advent dawn
The mother following me, chatting as she pirated fallen chicken feed
All those babies, remember the funeral my small sons conducted
For a tiny one found dead mid-lawn
Our erstwhile neighbours
Missing, presumed…..?
Copyright © 2020 Kim Whysall-Hammond
A second poem written in reponse to Earthweal’s challenge ‘Ghosts’ at
https://earthweal.com/2020/01/13/weekly-challenge-ghosts/
Please go and see what else is there!
This poem is also a direct reponse to Sumana Roy’s poem “Bring them Back”
https://gangulisumana60.wordpress.com/2020/01/13/bring-them-back/
We did not ask for this
we cannot control what we must
we can only rise to the times
and do what we see as right.
There is no one there to listen
no parent in the sky
we are the author of our souls
the believer in our faith
children of the universe.
Intellect and compassion?
Built solely from an interplay of atomic particles
our strange stay here on Earth
the true miracle of chance and physics
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
This poem was inspired by reading:
Advertisements
Occasionally, some of your visitors
When all, and birds, and creeping beasts,
When the dark of night is deep,
From the moving wonder of their lives
Commit themselves to sleep.
Without a thought, or fear, they shut
The narrow gates of sense;
Heedless and quiet, in slumber turn
Their strength to impotence.
The transient strangeness of the earth
Their spirits no more see:
Within a silent gloom withdrawn,
They slumber in secrecy.
Two worlds they have–a globe forgot,
Wheeling from dark to light;
And all the enchanted realm of dream
That burgeons out of night.
Child of Empire, he freely starved in Valetta
Free to resent the many fat priests
Free to go
Desperate, hoping
Stowaway to Istanbul
Free to be beaten by the Ottomans
Sent back to hunger
Not stopped yet
Stowaway to Britain
Set loose in Imperial London
Free to prosper
Free to work
Free-diver repairing Brighton’s Pier
Freely volunteered in 1914’s Expeditionary Force
Free to marry, to be British
Free to stay
Forty descendants, freely British
Freely given gifts of a Maltese boy
Seven fought in British wars
Immigration can be a free gift
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Written for Today’s National Poetry Day, which this year has the theme of Freedom.
As usual, when given a prompt or theme, my mind heads off slightly askew. This poem tells some of the story of my Maltese Grandfather. He came to Britain as a stowaway with nothing, found welcome and work. We need to remember how many of us are descended from people like him — and to remember to allow others similar freedoms.
As we move through space
We move through time
One controlled
The other inexorable
As the future approaches
We can but hold our head high
Wait for the chances
Have the courage to leap
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
The last poem from the challenge I’ve been following for a short while. This poem is in response to the prompt ‘future’.
My poetry is often triggered by landscape
By empty skies and lonely hills
Or the scattered beauty of an archipelago
I struggle
Again and again
To paint with watercolours
What I can paint with words
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Another part of the daily challenge I’m following for a short while. This poem is in response to the prompt ‘landscape’.
The Cheesesellers Wife 